A Propensity to Hate. An Opportunity to Heal.

Have you been feeling the hatred lately? It’s heavy in the air!

I’ve been feeling it a lot – feeling hatred in general, and the flashing neon hatred sign has been shining at me through people close to me.

From time to time, these strong feelings surface from inside. It seems this time, they’ve decided to stick around for a while.

When this happens, I take the feelings into my morning meditation and ask for help. I don’t want to be a hateful person. What I realize in this case is that I am feeling trapped in a situation that is not honoring of the love I truly want in my life. I am feeling powerless to act on inspirations to achieve the fulfillment I want in life.

It’s no wonder. This is not just about my relationship.

This is a reflection of what has been happening on a larger scale in the United States. Across the board, people have expressed a feeling of being stuck in a system that does not honor their needs, and they have felt powerless to change it. They are losing hope for fulfillment of the American dream.

When these feelings get stirred up in the masses, we all get affected by them. Do you ever notice that what comes up in your personal life parallels what is moving through the mass consciousness? It’s just a personal rendition of the headline stories on the news? Whatever we carry inside that resonates with the vibe of the masses is going to come to the surface.

These feelings of hatred are not new. What is new, at least in my homeland during my adult lifetime, is the level of hatred that is being openly expressed and justified in the mainstream. People have been uncomfortable for a long time, and now the discomfort has been amplified and agitated enough to motivate people to outwardly project anger and hatred, and, in many cases, act on it.

It’s like the parable of the boiling frogs. If you put live frogs into a pot of water (and I hope you won’t) and you turn up the heat slowly, the frogs won’t perceive the danger, and they’ll eventually cook to death. But if you drop them into boiling water, they’ll instantly jump out of the pot.

We’ve been stewing in a pot of warm water, with the heat steadily increasing over many years. It seems the water temperature has just been cranked up sharply enough to motivate us to jump out of the pot.

For the most part, we’re all ready to jump. Unfortunately, instead of acknowledging responsibility for our contributions to the increasing heat, we’re getting angry and throwing blame at our fellow frogs. We’re projecting hatred onto those we want to make responsible for our pain.

People are divided along the lines of what appears to be trapping them in the pot. Who is to blame? Is it the government or the corporations? Or the minorities or the dominant white male Americans?

We hate that which is responsible for our situations and we look to the opposite to save us. But we’re all in the same pot.

What we truly hate is the feeling of being trapped and the powerlessness that goes along with it. The person, the race, the religion, the culture, the system – these are just objects that we can project that hatred onto to make it real and justified.

We all have a propensity to hate. Is this a gift from God or a curse of the devil? Or both?

Hatred is a great motivator for change. We’ve all known for a long time that there is corruption in the systems and things need to change.

Many people have come along and promised a better life through radical change – an outsider who can perceive what is needed from outside the system and bring true reform. Their visions have been hopeful, but not enough to tip the scale – not enough to motivate the masses to take action.

But which is the more powerful motivator? Dangling a carrot of hope or rapidly turning up the heat? Just as in health, we all know how to live healthier lives, but people are more likely to make changes when faced with a critical illness.

Motivated by accessing our own hatred and encouraged to unapologetically blame an outer object for our rage – the systems that cheat, lie and oppress – we will finally act on the discomforts we have tolerated for a long time.

While the motivation for change can be good, we need to be careful about what we do with the emotions that have been stirred up, and where we look for salvation. We are not designed to live with hatred and act on the projections we make from a state of discomfort.

This is where we have choice, and we need to be careful about what we do with the hatred we feel.

We are all in the same pot. We can stay in the pot and all die together, we leap out into the fire and kill each other off, or we can set ourselves free and then the temperature of the pot will not affect our inner state.

It’s clear no one really wants to stay in and passively let the heat increase until we all pass away together.

If we jump out of the pot into the fire of blaming each other and projecting our hatred onto each other, this is not sustainable. This brings wars, oppression and devastation to others and ourselves – more of the very things we hate. Is that what we really want?

If we choose to set ourselves free, the propensity to hate can be a catalyst to heal the places inside that feel powerless and trapped.

We can use our emotions as an opportunity to find inner power and free ourselves from our own inner limitations. We can do this effectively with the intention to bring healing for the greater good and bring unity among the populations where there are lines of segmentation.

 
There is a Sufi teaching that says, “What shows up in front of you is for you and from you, but not about you.”

How is this for you?
We all carry feelings of oppression, and feelings of hatred toward the oppressor. This is one of those soul lessons each human has the opportunity to learn. When you find this inside yourself, it’s likely you are carrying generations worth of anger, hatred and ideas about who did what to whom to justify this state of affairs. What comes before you is a mirror that reflects for you an opportunity for healing – a lesson for the evolution of your soul.

How is this from you?
The situation before you reflects a belief system that has affected your behavior patterns your whole life. You have bought into the system created through this belief and contributed through living according to this system – playing by these rules.

 
Here’s a personal example: My mother felt trapped. She expressed it often. “Don’t ever become dependent on a man. Don’t ever get yourself stuck in a situation where you can’t leave.”

My mother was a brilliant, creative person. She was valedictorian of her high school class, and was offered a full scholarship for college back in 1942. However, her mother would not allow her to attend college, because “That’s where girls go to get pregnant.”

So, my mother stayed home, married my father and had her first child at 19. She had 5 more after that. She never found an outlet for her creativity and brilliance. She felt trapped in a life that was unfulfilling for her. She became very depressed, and, yes, very hateful.

I realize that I’ve carried this fear of being trapped, and a rage toward any man who dared try to trap me. It’s an ingrained preconceived lens through which I have viewed relationships, whether there is truth to it or not.

 
This is an example of how the hatred in the air of the masses right now is for me.
It brings up my inner feelings of oppression and gives me an opportunity to find healing inside myself. If I allow myself to be present with the anger and fear I feel, I have an opportunity to heal a common earth lesson for many generations of souls in my family lineage.

This is a great honor, and it does have the ability to create a shift in the mass consciousness, just as the mass consciousness has the ability to create a shift in my state.

 
Here’s how this is from me.
As long as I carry this belief, this lens will continue to affect the way I view the world. How I live my relationships and what I project into them is directly shaped by this belief. As long as my soul and the souls of my lineage need this lesson, this pattern will continue to present itself. This allows me to see clearly what healing is needed for the evolution of my soul.

Once having seen the opportunity to receive a soul teaching, I can make the choice for healing.

 
So you may be thinking, doing the inner work is great, but it doesn’t change the system that is in such desperate need of reform. If you are called to take action to affect change on a mass scale, this is beautiful. Some of us are, and some are called to act within our personal lives and our family units.

In any case, if you have not done the inner work, can you truly advocate for the change you wish to see in the world?

Gandhi said, “Be the change you wish to see in the world.” Every action we take is filtered through our lenses. If our lenses are cloudy, can we affect the change we wish to see with clarity? Or are we perpetuating the shadows created by the clouds that obstruct the light?

We don’t have to be perfect before we act, but we need to be committed to polishing the lenses of our eyes and the mirrors of our hearts in order to clearly reflect the light we wish to be into the world.
 

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